2.8 What happened with the Edge Loops?
The normal loop-select shortcut in Blender is to click one edge of the loop while holding down alt. This works in both 2.7x and 2.8x. control+alt clicking an edge will select an edge ring. Make sure you are in edge select mode and not face or vertex select. In face select mode, these will select loops/rings of faces. In vertex select mode, it will try and select a loop/ring, but since edges often share a vertex this will probably select more than you intended.